Does Ted Thompson not deserve some benefit of the doubt, given what he's accomplished so far in his tenure?
Yes. The criticism of Ted Thompson reminds me very much of the constant criticism of AJ Smith during his first few years as Chargers GM.If you listened to the fans, everything he did was a huge mistake. Cutting David Boston, drafting-and-trading Eli Manning for three draft picks who have all been Pro Bowlers (instead of passing on Manning to draft Robert Gallery) ... nearly everything he did, he was heavily criticized for, and pretty much every time it has worked out great. People were suggesting that AJ Smith should have been fired immediately after the draft when he selected Antonio Cromartie and Marcus McNeill with the first two picks.
The common theme, though, is that people always criticized AJ Smith for stuff that hadn't played out yet. People thought he should be fired because they
predicted that Cromartie wouldn't be a good player ... but they didn't wait to see who was right.
It's the same thing with Ted Thompson now. People might say that Thompson should be fired because they
think Aaron Rodgers won't be as good as Brett Favre. But nobody's waiting to see who's right about that.
I would say that if you're going to criticize Thompson for something, you should wait to see how it works out before suggesting he should be fired. If it works out great, the criticism will look silly in hindsight.
I know there were some threads here in the Shark pool skewering Thompson for hiring McCarthy . . . Maybe people should have waited before being so harshly critical.
To say "My opinion differs from Thompson's, so I think he's wrong" is one thing. But to say "My opinion differs from Thompson so I think he should be fired before we wait to find out who was right" seems a bit premature.
Why this isn't more apparent to the people who are all over the team and supporting Favre is beyond me.
"It's very personal for him".This sounds like, according to McCarthy, Favre's holding too much of a grudge and isn't ready to work as part of the team. Wow.
That's my interpretation of the tone here too. McCarthy has every reason here to keep a low profile. If this goes sideways for the team, Thompson will be the fall guy. But McCarthy is saying some pretty pointed things about Favre that he doesn't need to say. This could be a very vanilla press conference ("we met and had a very productive discussion, we're going to speak again later in the week, blah, blah, blah"), but McCarthy seemed PO'ed about the meeting.
